SPIKE LEE comes from a long line of tendentious, arrogant artists of the cinema. Leni Riefenstahl and Oliver Stone come immediately to mind. When I watch their movies, I am engrossed by the ingenious rhythms, visual inventiveness and sheer love of film that is expressed in their work.

But I can't help being infuriated by the bombastic oversimplification, shallowness and high hooey content of their movies. Explain, explain, explain. That seems to be the motto of the two modern-era propagandists. With their high-handed reinterpretations of history,

"Malcolm X" and "JFK" are basically the same movie. With their emotional fireworks and shaky politics, so are

"Do the Right Thing" and "Born on the Fourth of July."

Lee's "Clockers" is one more example of Lee explaining inner city racial tension and crime, and offering equal absolution to dealers, racists and murderers. As long as the perpetrators are sorry for their transgressions, Lee is ready to forgive. This must be why the killer goes free at the end of this movie.

Strike Dunham (Mekhi Phifer) is trying to get ahead in the local drug organization. He is a street dealer on 24-hour call (hence the name "clocker" ) who is the special favorite of his boss, Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo). But before Rodney can promote him, he needs to ensure Strike's unshakable loyalty. So he orders Strike to kill someone. Strike, who reveres Rodney, naively thinks of the assignment as a test of his grit. In fact, Rodney just needs to have a murder rap hanging over his flunky's head for blackmail purposes.

Strike, who has a bleeding ulcer and literally no stomach for the work, asks his brother Victor (Isaiah Washington) to do the job for him. This is an odd choice for an alternate hitman; Victor holds down two jobs to support his loving wife and family. In the fast-food restaurant where he works, he has a talent for defusing local toughs looking for a fight. He is Gandhi-like in his serenity, wisdom and cool-headed handling of tense and threatening moments. For some reason, we are to believe that Victor thinks it's a good idea to shoot someone so that his younger brother, who has a long rap sheet, won't have to go to jail. The movie is off to a shaky start with this incredible premise.

Harvey Keitel plays Rocco Klein, the cop who likes to refer to black suspects as "yos," only slightly less derogatory than the favored term of his partner Larry Mazilli (John Turturro) - "Nubians."

Lee captures with disturbing believability the raging racism and blase cynicism the cops bring to their work. Standing over a young black homicide victim, one cop deadpans, "The kid had brains," as Lee's camera closes in on the brains leaking out of an exploded cranium.

Rocco spends the movie trying to save what he thinks is an innocent man and arrest a guilty one. From this point of view he is the movie's hero, but either out of self-protectiveness or innate racism, he is as ugly and slimy as the bad guys he pursues. Still, because he doesn't believe angelic Victor's confession and thinks evil Strike is the killer, we root for him to prevail. Lee seems to think that all his major characters are basically good people who deserve another chance, and so for the sake of an inappropriate happy ending, everyone important gets one. The cop solves the case. The murderer gets a light sentence. The dealer doesn't get gunned down by members of his gang.

The interactions between Rocco and Strike are the movie's best, partly because Rocco is on to Strike's deep-down amorality (even if Spike Lee isn't) and partly because Keitel is such a wonderful actor that he makes even a newcomer like Phifer seem competent.

As usual, Lee includes spectacular opening credits. This time, the titles roll over (fake) pictures of young black murder victims at crime scenes. Lee starts his customary preaching early here. This is what death looks like, he announces to all the gun-toting boys in the 'hood who think they will live forever.

The movie is based on the novel by Richard Price, who co-wrote the script with Lee. But in the end, it's more Lee's story than Price's. When Martin Scorsese was set to direct (before Lee was involved in the project), Robert De Niro was cast to play Rocco. As in the book, Rocco was the story's major figure. When Scorsese and De Niro dropped out, Lee shifted the focus to Strike.

Less successful is turning Victor into a happily married family man. In the book, he is stuck with the woman he made pregnant. Without domestic disharmony to prod him, Victor's actions don't make much sense, which is why Lee has to take such pains to tediously explain it all at the end of the film.

What this movie demonstrates more than anything else is Lee's own ambivalence. In one scene someone asks a clocker if he knows what Alzheimer's is. He says, "It's some kinda beer?" With Lee's superiority complex he can't keep from disdaining stupidity wherever he finds it. He seems to hold the two opposing views that people - even oppressed people - should take responsibility for their lives, but also that the world's unfortunates - especially oppressed people - should blame society for their victimhood. Until Lee figures out what he really thinks, his movies are going to express more confusion than clarity.